Cisco Chief Chides NSA in Letter to Obama

Cisco’s John Chambers, during a keynote address at Mobile World Congress in February.

Bloomberg News

Cisco Chief John Chambers has complained to President Obama about the National Security Agency, following reports that it intercepts U.S.-made networking hardware on the way to foreign customers to install modifications to allow NSA snooping.

“We simply can’t operate this way,” Chambers wrote in a letter to the president, which was reported earlier by the Financial Times and obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

The letter is dated May 15. Chambers is scheduled to speak in San Francisco today at the networking equipment giant’s annual gathering for customers.

NSA documents describing the interceptions were published in excerpts of a book by Glenn Greenwald, a Guardian newspaper reporter who has written extensively based on documents provided by former NSA contract Edward Snowden.

One document distributed along with the book shows a photograph of Cisco equipment at an undisclosed NSA facility being opened to install the modifications, which are typically called backdoors.

“We ship our products from locations inside, as well as outside the United States, and if these allegations are true, these actions will undermine confidence in our industry and in the ability of technology companies to deliver products globally,” Chambers wrote.

Chambers called for “a new set of ‘rules of the road,’ to ensure that appropriate safeguards and limits exist that serve national security objectives, while at the same time meet the needs of global commerce.”

Cisco’s general counsel, Mark Chandler, also write a blog post last week in the wake of the revelations. “As a matter of policy and practice, Cisco does not work with any government, including the United States government, to weaken our products,” Chandler wrote, in language echoed by Chambers. “When we learn of a security vulnerability, we respond by validating it, informing our customers and fixing it.”

Juniper Networks, another major supplier of networking equipment, issued its own statement in the wake of the revelations last week.

“As we’ve stated previously, Juniper Networks takes allegations of this nature very seriously. To be clear, we do not work with governments to purposely introduce weaknesses or vulnerabilities into our products,” a company spokeswoman said.

“As a company that consistently operates with the highest of ethical standards, we are committed to maintaining the integrity and security of our products.”

The latest disclosures follow longtime warnings from the U.S. government about buying Chinese-made networking equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies because of the possibility of backdoor features that could be exploited by Chinese agencies. Greenwald noted that the NSA, all the while, is doing the same thing.

An NSA spokeswoman issued this statement at the time of the reports about interception of hardware exports.

“While we cannot comment on specific, alleged intelligence-gathering activities, NSA’s interest in any given technology is driven by the use of that technology by foreign intelligence targets. The United States pursues its intelligence mission with care to ensure that innocent users of those same technologies are not affected.”